It is very energy intensive to get Hydrogen into a usable form, especially when not just deriving from existing Hydrocarbons. [1] They do at least acknowledge this in the article.
If they manage to crack that problem, there will be a lot more promising technologies than combing Hydrogen and CO2 to make a Petroleum-replacement-fuel.
It's a perfect example of getting caught up in the implications of the solution of a hard problem before you've got it solved. Why if we only had access to limitless cheap hydrogen we could...
There's endless neat energy things we could do with limitless cheap hydrogen once we have it. This one isn't even that interesting, just academic pipe-dreaming.
I'm all for encouraging the science (they may make a breakthrough whilst researching it) and don't wish to belittle their achievements. But the article presenting this as a feasible fuel is wrong.
It's like designing a car that runs on Fusion power... great idea, but not a reality until a fairly major technical hurdle has been overcome first, namely; harnessing Fusion Power. And even then, there are far more exciting uses for the technology.
Is solar powered electrolysis that bad? You could have platforms with solar panels and tanks floating in the ocean and every so often come to harvest the hidrogen and oxygen.
Is this a stupid idea?
I think it's a great Idea. But you'd still be using more electricity breaking the Hydrogen than you would if you just used the Solar power direct. Also, not sure how much energy this would require to do at scale.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
There's endless neat energy things we could do with limitless cheap hydrogen once we have it. This one isn't even that interesting, just academic pipe-dreaming.
I'm all for encouraging the science (they may make a breakthrough whilst researching it) and don't wish to belittle their achievements. But the article presenting this as a feasible fuel is wrong.
It's like designing a car that runs on Fusion power... great idea, but not a reality until a fairly major technical hurdle has been overcome first, namely; harnessing Fusion Power. And even then, there are far more exciting uses for the technology.